Topic 42: Write about your best friend
“Friend” is a word we use far too easily, until we forget what it means. But then again, it rarely means the same thing to more than two or three persons; we are too different from each other. To me, the meaning got defined decades ago, and has been redefining itself ever since.
It wasn’t that Jack Bristow and myself worked together when young; naturally professionalism demands you get along with your partner in the field. But those kind of relationships are quickly established and easily discarded, if needs be. Jack had other partners, especially since I got promoted somewhat faster, and so did I. Jack used to remark we shared an unsentimental patriotism and the devotion to our wives in those days, but these traits were not exactly rare among C.I.A. agents, either; we could have found them in other people as well. There was, of course, the lack of false modesty and the awareness we were both brilliant, which simply demanded either rivalry or alliance, though I myself never was a friend of either/or; the obvious solution was both/and, to me. Yet again, we were not unique in this, either. And we did have other friends. But even before I made the choices that were to cause me to leave the C.I.A., even before Laura became Irina and Jack lost a part of himself that enabled him to open to - selected - strangers, there was a distinction. It was forged somewhere between those walks in Washington, talking while the lanterns ignited, somewhere between patching each other up after the mole in Berlin we were supposed to question turned out to be a triple and arguing over the new restrictions handed out to the Company in the aftermath of the Nixon administration. Somewhere between enduring his peculiar fondness for ABBA and defending the works of an admittedly overpopular British composer who nonetheless did produce some of my favourite songs. Somewhere between tacit agreements certain interrogation methods would never make it into the official report and the sunset watched on Mount Abu in India during a stakeout. Decades later, it was still there, despite or perhaps because of what had happened in between.
It might be the very thing that seperates comfortable aquaintance from friendship; betrayal, and the aftermath. I betrayed Jack through my affair with his wife, and later through recruiting his daughter. Jack betrayed me through doing to me what Irina had done to him, and later by trading in my life twice, though the bargain was never called in, once for, as I later found out, Vaughn who amazingly had enough blood to need a cure after all, and once because Katya and Irina or solely Katya were in a mood for games. He put me through death and resurrection; I did the same to him. We were in vastly different states at the respective time, yet I was and remain convinced of this: neither of us would have dealt out death if we had not known we could also resurrect.
We were, after all, best friends.
It wasn’t that Jack Bristow and myself worked together when young; naturally professionalism demands you get along with your partner in the field. But those kind of relationships are quickly established and easily discarded, if needs be. Jack had other partners, especially since I got promoted somewhat faster, and so did I. Jack used to remark we shared an unsentimental patriotism and the devotion to our wives in those days, but these traits were not exactly rare among C.I.A. agents, either; we could have found them in other people as well. There was, of course, the lack of false modesty and the awareness we were both brilliant, which simply demanded either rivalry or alliance, though I myself never was a friend of either/or; the obvious solution was both/and, to me. Yet again, we were not unique in this, either. And we did have other friends. But even before I made the choices that were to cause me to leave the C.I.A., even before Laura became Irina and Jack lost a part of himself that enabled him to open to - selected - strangers, there was a distinction. It was forged somewhere between those walks in Washington, talking while the lanterns ignited, somewhere between patching each other up after the mole in Berlin we were supposed to question turned out to be a triple and arguing over the new restrictions handed out to the Company in the aftermath of the Nixon administration. Somewhere between enduring his peculiar fondness for ABBA and defending the works of an admittedly overpopular British composer who nonetheless did produce some of my favourite songs. Somewhere between tacit agreements certain interrogation methods would never make it into the official report and the sunset watched on Mount Abu in India during a stakeout. Decades later, it was still there, despite or perhaps because of what had happened in between.
It might be the very thing that seperates comfortable aquaintance from friendship; betrayal, and the aftermath. I betrayed Jack through my affair with his wife, and later through recruiting his daughter. Jack betrayed me through doing to me what Irina had done to him, and later by trading in my life twice, though the bargain was never called in, once for, as I later found out, Vaughn who amazingly had enough blood to need a cure after all, and once because Katya and Irina or solely Katya were in a mood for games. He put me through death and resurrection; I did the same to him. We were in vastly different states at the respective time, yet I was and remain convinced of this: neither of us would have dealt out death if we had not known we could also resurrect.
We were, after all, best friends.